


The Loaded Die

by magebird, plingo_kat



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Pre-Slash, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magebird/pseuds/magebird, https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom did have a totem before Mal’s top- it was the red die that is now Arthur’s</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loaded Die

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** [Dom did have a totem before Mal’s top- it was the red die that is now Arthur’s.](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/4946.html?thread=6212690#t6212690)

Arthur went to Dom the day Mal died. The hotel room was already swarming with policemen, but they let Arthur through with a minimum of argument.

Dom was a still point in the center of the room, sitting among the destruction in a perfect suit with his face buried in his hands. Arthur hesitated, staring at him for a moment, before he could bring himself to go and kneel in the space before him. He reached out to touch Dom’s shoulder lightly.

“Dom,” Arthur said.

He’d never seen Dom crying before, but then again the man who came back from limbo wasn’t the same Dom that Arthur had known. Maybe that was why he only felt numb, now, with Mal gone. He’d already grieved for them both, in the weeks after they’d returned. This was only the completion of Arthur’s loss.

“She’s dead,” Dom said, and the broken edges of his voice cut into Arthur like knives, “Oh god…”

“I’m so sorry,” Arthur said, feeling hollow.

“She jumped,” Dom turned his face blindly towards the window, “This can’t be real.”

A sickening jolt shook Arthur, and he grabbed Dom’s wrist, “Where’s your totem, Dom?”

Dom uncurled his hand, and Arthur saw Mal’s top sitting in his palm. The sharp point had dug into his skin, leaving a little red mark, and Dom looked down at it with eyes that weren’t quite focused.

“That’s Mal’s,” Arthur told him gently, “Where’s yours? Do you have it with you?”

“Don’t want it.” Dom turned the top in his hand, staring at it.

“Where is it?” Arthur asked again. He didn’t know whether Dom could even hear him through the whitewashed haze of shock and grief, but a second later Dom closed his hand around Mal’s totem again, and reached into the pocket of his suit jacket to draw out the little red die. He held it in his fingers for a second, and then held it out, looking at Arthur with a blank expression.

“Here,” he said, and Arthur put his hand out without thinking, letting Dom drop the loaded die into his outstretched palm.

It hit his skin like an electric spark, too-heavy, and he almost dropped it. He tried not to look down, tried not to learn how much it weighed, how the sharp edges of the plastic felt against his fingers.

“Dom—“ he said, but Dom suddenly shuddered and seemed to collapse in on himself, and Arthur closed his hand around the die to keep it from slipping through his fingers.

He found it again in his pocket what seemed like years later, when he finally had a chance to go home to try and sleep. He left it on his dresser, with the intent to give it back, but somehow he never got around to it.

\-----

Arthur noticed the die again the day after the FBI called to ask him if he knew where Dom had fled. He didn’t, of course, but he’d spent the day at Dom’s house helping watch the children while their grandmother tried to sort out the paperwork.

He couldn’t help but be angry, and he left it there on the dresser-top for another day and a half, as if ignoring its presence there would somehow send a message to Dom, wherever he was.

When he rolled it after another sleepless night, it came up with a five three times in a row. Arthur put it in his pocket before he left to take Phillipa to school.

\-----

Cobb called him almost six months later. In the instant after he said, “There’s a job,” Arthur almost told him to go to hell.

Instead, he just stuck his hand into his pocket, turning the loaded die over in his fingers, and asked where.

In the first dream they’d shared in more than a year, Cobb didn’t ask about his family, and Arthur could have strangled him. He could feel Cobb’s eyes on the back of his neck when they woke up to the tune of a song that reminded Arthur of the smell of Mal’s perfume, and when Arthur rolled the die he heard Cobb stop breathing.

It was too difficult to meet Cobb’s eyes after it came up five, and so Arthur just picked his totem up and walked away.

\-----

“What are you doing?” Cobb asked him after they’d finished the job, while they waiting in the airport for flights to different ends of the world.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arthur responded. He didn’t look up from the magazine he wasn’t reading.

“This. You’re ignoring me. You won’t look me in the eye.” Cobb paused, then said. “You’re furious with me.”

“Oh, I don’t see where you’d get that impression,” Arthur snapped, turning a page of the magazine hard enough to tear it, “You only abandoned—“ _me_ “Everyone who cared about you. Don’t see why that would make me upset.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Cobb said quickly, “It was that or go to jail for the rest of my life.”

“How hard would it have been to call?”

“Harder than you know.”

“Bullshit.” Arthur stood, shoving the magazine into a front pocket of his carry-on. “I lived out of a motel for three fucking months helping to take care of your children while Mal’s mother tried to deal with the FBI. We thought you were dead, too. You want to know what’s hard? That’s hard.” He swung the bag up onto his shoulder, “A phone call is nothing.”

“Arthur—“

“Don’t speak to me. I’ll come if you call me about a job, but don’t you dare try to talk to me otherwise,” Arthur started walking towards his gate with long, deliberate strides, “You give your family a call and you apologize. Then maybe we can talk.”

He didn’t look back, and Cobb didn’t follow.

\-----

Three weeks later, Arthur swung by Los Angeles on his way to Kyoto for a job with an extractor that wasn’t Cobb, and out of habit and duty he went by Mal’s old house. The children were excited to see him, as always, and their grandmother invited him inside with a wide smile.

Phillipa insisted on taking him out to the back porch, where they had been playing, and proudly showed him a brand new set of blocks, intricately carved and brightly painted.

“Where did you get these?” he asked, taking one away from James before he started to chew on it. They were solid, heavy, and on closer inspection appeared to be handmade.

“Grandpa brought them,” Phillipa said, “But they’re from daddy, he said.”

“Oh.” Arthur looked mutely at the block in his hand for a second, then set it down with the others, pulling a smile onto his face, “Show me what you can build out of them, sweetheart.”

“Okay, but make James sit _there_ so he won’t knock them down,” Phillipa said imperiously, crouching down to start stacking them into a tower.

He stayed for dinner, and after the children were tucked in bed, he sat down with their grandmother, Camille.

“Is he well?” she asked. There was no need to wonder who she was talking about.

Arthur nodded, looking down at the glass of wine she’d pushed on him, “He seems fine.”

“Will he come back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he can, but I don’t know if he wants to.”

Her heavy sigh made him glance up, and he saw her looking towards the stairs leading to the children’s room. “They both miss him, and Phillipa misses her mother. She asks about them both. James, he barely remembers her, but he knows someone is missing, and he will be old enough soon to understand.”

“Has he called?” Arthur asked gently.

“Yes, yes… He called, and asked to speak to the children. They were at school, and he told me he would be sending some gifts for them.” Camille sipped at her wine, paused for a moment, then sighed again, “It will not make up for him being gone, though, and I told him. He gave me a number to call him, but…” She trailed off, shrugged, “I do not want to make the children more sad. It is hard enough, no?”

“Yes…” Arthur looked out the window, at the darkening sky. The moon was just starting to rise, casting weird shadows across the back yard and into the living room. Camille had turned on a lamp, but its yellow glow was dim and the room was mostly dark. Arthur had seen this house in many guises. Back when Mal was alive—truly alive, before limbo—it had always been bright and chaotic. There was always the smell of something cooking in the kitchen, and of course as soon as the children had arrived their shrieks had become part of the scenery. It had always been warm, always been wonderful. But after Mal was gone, it seemed diminished, and after she died it lost the last remnants of that glow.

Arthur rubbed at something in his eye, and then set his glass down on the coffee table untouched. “Thank you for dinner.”

“Of course,” Camille rose, the perfect hostess, to walk him to the door, “You must come visit again soon. The children miss you, too.”

“I’ll come by on my way back home,” he said, and kissed her cheek in farewell before slipping on his coat and walking out into the night.

\-----

After the job in Kyoto, the extractor (a dark-skinned woman named Vera) saw Arthur rolling the die and asked him what it was.

“It’s a totem. Keeps track of whether or not I’m in the dream,” Arthur explained, showing it to her. Before he could stop her, she took it out of his hand, turning it between her fingers with an interested expression.

“Nice,” she said. Arthur felt a little surge of anger, and held his hand out for the die.

“Give it back,” he said in a stony tone, and she looked surprised but dropped it back into his outstretched hand, “Letting someone else touch it defeats the purpose.”

Vera frowned a little, “Why is it a die, mate?”

“Reminds me of someone,” Arthur said a little stiffly, putting it into his pocket again quickly and moving to start rolling up the IV lines.

“Someone who died?” Vera asked.

Arthur sighed, “No, but he’s not the same person he was. This was his back when I actually knew him.”

“Oh,” Vera said, as if she understood. The urge to hit her rose suddenly, and Arthur took a deep settling breath. “It’s a good idea.”

“Yes,” Arthur said, and busied himself before she could ask any more questions.

\-----

The next job Cobb called him for fell through before they’d even gotten a chance to get close to the mark, but they ended up being hired almost immediately by a jealous husband trying to find out if his wife was cheating on him. It was a simple enough mission, all things told, and they spent a few days in Amsterdam waiting for their payment to come in. 

They client had booked them in a suite with two adjoining rooms separated by a common area, and as soon as they got back and set their things down, Arthur’s hand went to his pocket on reflex, found the die, and tossed it lightly onto the coffee table. It came up five, as he’d expected, and he scooped it back up again, rolling it between his fingers, feeling the rough edge where they plastic had been scratched in some unknown accident.

“What happened to your pocket watch?” Cobb asked, and Arthur heard him set the PASIV case down on the table by the door.

Arthur sighed, “I lost it.”

“You don’t lose things, Arthur,” Cobb said, and Arthur resented the familiarity in his tone. Cobb seemed to sense his annoyance, because Arthur heard a sigh, “I called Camille.”

“She said.”

“I called again, after you were there. I talked to Phillipa.”

Arthur stilled, looking away from the die still held between his fingers. “And?”

“She asked me when I was coming home. I told her I didn’t know.” There was the sound of ice clinking into a glass, then running water from the sink, “She asked where her mommy was.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her that Mal’s dead, what do you _think_ I told her?” Cobb said, his voice gone suddenly harsh and tight. Arthur closed his hand around the die for a second, then let it fall to the table again. Five.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and heard Cobb sigh.

“Me too.”

\-----

Mal stood in the center of the ballroom dressed in black, staring up towards the balcony. It was only seconds after the dream had begun, and Arthur felt the drink he hadn’t yet realized he held slip from his fingers. Glass shattered on the floor.

“Cobb—“ he hissed, but when he turned to where he expected Cobb to be, he wasn’t there.

When he looked back, Mal was gone as well, but there was an empty place where she’d stood, as if none of the projections dared step in to the spot where she had been.

It took him several heart-pounding minutes to find Cobb, and when he did it was impossible to interrupt him, since he was already deep in conversation with the mark (an old woman who refused to reveal the location of her will to her children.) So Arthur waited, standing just far enough away that he wouldn’t be noticed, and tried to tell himself that it was only a dream. After all, the die rolled on a nearby table came up four, three, and six. Never five. It was a dream.

He could smell her perfume before she spoke his name, and it was that little detail that almost made him drop his second drink. Shaking a little, he turned, and saw her smiling at him. She looked like herself, like the Mal he had known before limbo, only she couldn’t be. Mal was dead.

“Hello, Mal,” he said softly, and didn’t resist as she took his hand in hers (soft, warm) and tugged him gently towards the dance floor. The other dancers parted for them, made space, and Arthur set his glass down on the tray of a passing waiter before Mal pulled him into a slow waltz, leaning her head on his shoulder. She was solid, real, a steady presence as they swayed to the music.

“Do you miss me, Arthur?” she asked softly as the band switched to a different song.

“Yes,” Arthur said around the lump that had inexplicably risen in his throat.

“Does Dom miss me?”

“Of course he does.” Arthur said. He saw the wedding ring still on her finger as she leaned back in a dip, her hair slipping back and away from her face, revealing the smooth curve of her neck. She was perfect. Exact.

“But he has you,” Mal murmured in his ear as they moved as one, letting the greater movement of the dance carry them in a slow circuit of the room. They were across from Dom and the mark now, Arthur noticed dimly.

“It’s not the same—“ Arthur said, but he felt something hard press against his chest, right above his heart. He looked down at the pistol, and then at Mal, “What--?”

Arthur awoke gasping, hands grasping at his shirt where the bright blossom of agony had jerked him back to reality.

Dom stirred a moment later, his brow furrowing, and Arthur saw the mark’s hands clench convulsively. It had been his dream. It would be falling apart any minute.

Too dazed to do anything else, Arthur yanked the IV out of his own wrist, and then out of Dom’s, and started to pack up their things. Dom was still groggy as Arthur all but dragged him out the door, slamming it behind them just as the mark started to wake up.

Dom asked him, later, what the hell had happened, and Arthur sighed, staring at the five white dots.

“You dreamt of Mal,” he said, and Dom stopped pacing.

“Oh,” he said, and there was nothing else to say.

\-----

Arthur took half a dozen wrapped packages back to Los Angeles after that job, and James and Phillipa were delighted. Camille invited him in, a she always did, but Arthur made up some story about having a plane to catch and didn’t stay. He didn’t want to be in Mal’s house, not when he could still feel the pressure of the gun’s barrel pressing into his chest. It was too real, too close. 

Dom called him from Prague, and Arthur took a job that he wouldn’t have considered had it not been him asking. Too dangerous, for one thing, and for another he found the idea of stealing information for the sole purpose of a smear campaign against a political opponent to be almost too low. Almost.

He knew Dom wouldn’t have done it, if he’d had a choice.

Maybe that was why Mal had been so angry when they’d arrived. She had always been so idealistic about what dream-sharing could be used for, who it could help. She would not have approved of them becoming thieves.

Whatever the reason, she found Dom and Arthur half an hour into the dream. She came up out of nowhere, while Arthur and Dom were trying to keep a small mob of angry projections from making it across a bridge to where they were. Arthur saw Dom’s face go pale, saw him mouth her name.

“Give up fighting, sweetheart,” Mal said, “Come back with me.”

“Dom,” Arthur said in a low, urgent tone. Dom looked at him for a moment, but Mal got between them again, her back to Arthur. In the low V of her dress, her skin glowed pale white in the semi-darkness. 

The sound of bullets startled them both, and Arthur cursed as he saw the leader of the projections sprinting towards them, automatic rifle raised and aiming towards them. Before Arthur could get his gun up, though, Mal got in the way, her fingers like ice around his wrist, forcing his arm down with a strength he wouldn’t have expected.

“Sweet Arthur. So loyal,” she said, her voice breathy and close, and Arthur couldn’t bring himself to fire the gun into her.

Dom yanked her off him, though Arthur saw him wince as she cried out a little in pain as Dom’s fingers bit into her wrist. It took too long for Dom to regain himself, to meet Mal’s eyes and then tear himself away.

“Run,” he said, dropping Mal’s wrist, and Arthur forced himself to go, ducking as a bullet bit into the dirt a few inches from his feet.

\-----

Arthur followed Dom back to his hotel, shutting the door behind them. Dom didn’t tell him to leave, just poured a second glass of something from a short, rounded bottle and handed it to him before finding a place on the narrow, nondescript sofa near the single window of the room.

“How often do you see her?” Arthur asked, taking a sip of his drink gingerly. He didn’t recognize what it was, but it tasted strong.

“It used to be every time,” Dom said, “Sometimes in the distance. Sometimes she ruins the job.” He stared down into his glass, as if trying to read some answer there.

“Dom, you need to get help for this.”

“I’m handling it fine.” Dom looked away, out of the window that opened on to the back of a building across the alleyway, “She’s not always there. I don’t play architect anymore, so even if she does show up she usually can’t find… Anyone…”

Arthur leaned forward and set the die on the table gently. Dom’s eyes flicked to it, and then away.

“She’s not real,” Arthur said, “She’s only a projection.”

It took a long time for Dom to respond, then he sighed and reached out to pick up the die, to roll it on the table between them. It came to a stop a few centimeters from the edge of the table.

“I know that,” Dom said, staring at the die where it lay.

Arthur sighed, and took it back, slipping it into his pocket. By now, it was a familiar weight.


End file.
